“I have made more mistakes than I can count. But when something goes wrong, it does no good to hide and cry. You have to take what you’ve learned, and keep going.”
– Chava, The Golem and the JinniBy Helene Wecker

There’s not much I can add to that, is there? 🙂 Still, just a bit… 😉

We are all human. You, me, our enemies, our friends, and most especially our heroes. The people who seem perfect? Human. They make mistakes too. The people who seem like a waste of space? Human. They do useful things too.

When we make mistakes, we tend to think we are in the latter category: stupid, useless fools. When we do something grand, we feel we’re in the former category: grand, infallible giants among men. Both attitudes are useless, and both are lacking in humility. To be humble does not mean to abase ourselves into the gutter, it means to have a realistic view of ourselves and others.

Mistakes are simply inevitable, no matter what comes before. It’s what comes after that matters, as with so many things.

When, not if, we do something wrong, something costly, something inconvenient to ourselves and others, the imperative is not that we beat ourselves up, nor that we let ourselves easily off the hook. We take responsibility, we learn, we grow, we correct our mistake, and then we take what we’ve learned and apply it. All we can hope for is not to make the same mistake multiple times.

In short: when you trip and fall, get back up and step a little more carefully.